Book Review: Windows into the soul: Surveillance and society in an age of high technology

• Date: 01 September 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567718776352
• Published date: 01 September 2021
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

call for every unaddressed social problem. We do need better policing. But, we also need better

everything.

The End of Policing is worth reading. It is deeply satisfying at the same time as being utterly

frustrating and traumatizing because of the evidence that is justifiably brought forward. Overall, I

will be on the lookout for Vitale’s next book. The End of Poli cing needs a companion. In the

meantime, I will prescribe some sections of this book to my police recruits and its entirety to my

third-year undergraduates. I may even give my copy to our neighbors. Their next arguments about

the police will be nothing if not more informed.

Note

1. The Compagnies Re´publicaines de Se´curite´ is a special branch of the French Police Nationale, with a focus

on public order, rescue, and traffic policing (https://www.police-nationale.net/compagnies-republicaines-

securite/).

Marx, G. T. (2016).

Windows into the soul: Surveillance and society in an age of high technology. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

400 pp. $35, ISBN-13: 978-0226285917.

Reviewed by: Bruce Jacobs, University of Tex as at Dallas, Richa rdson, TX, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567718776352

There is arguably no topic more germane to American civil liberty than surveillance. What we do,

where we go, and how we communicate are all increasingly being watched. The watchers no longer

are exclusively government authorities—the Orwellian concern that has long plagued civil libertar-

ians. Rather, surveillance has become part and parcel of the private sector. That has frightening

implications for the nexus between liberty and security.

It is this state of affairs that Gary Marx expertly explores in Windows into the Soul. No person is

better positioned to write this book than Marx. Author of the classic Undercover: Police Surveil-

lance in America some 30 years ago, Marx was among the first to devote serious academic inquiry to

the encroaching police state. Since publication of that book, the police state has gotten incrementally

more invasive yet commensurately more privatized. That trend, I believe, is the core contribution

of Windows.

Among the most troubling features of this new surveillance are its ubiquity, stealth, and exploi-

tative capacity. Ubiquity is an artifact of technology infused in goods and services that is supposed to

make our lives easier, more convenient, and more efficient. Every time we use a credit card, it leaves

a record of where we shopped, when, and how much we purchased. Internet searches leave quasi-

permanent trails that provide potential marketers a mechanism to target our preferences and exploit

them for monetary purposes. Social media offers unparalleled opportunities to capture data, analyze

it, and mine it for ulterior motives. Marx rightly points out that the rise of “surveillance capitalism”

rivals or exceeds any privacy threats from the government.

Marx also points out that this kind of surveillance is often more insidious than the traditional

Orwellian counterpart because it either is pseudo-voluntary or because people often are less than

fully aware that is indeed taking place. Privacy, once lost, is extraordinarily difficult to reestablish—

particularly when large multinational corporations that profit from its existence suggest that no one

is really being harmed by the data collection and argue further that society is obtaining a net benefit

from it.

Book Reviews 349